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by kyrieanne



Category: The Autobiography of Jane Eyre
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-29
Updated: 2013-10-29
Packaged: 2017-12-30 19:54:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1022746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrieanne/pseuds/kyrieanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jane contemplates what she has and what she doesn't have as she returns to Thornfield after Mrs. Reed's death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> The recurring theme of home struck a personal chord and this is the result. I listened to 'When the Right One Comes Along' (from the show Nashville) on repeat while writing this. It makes for good reading music too.

Jane loves airports.

She picks flights long layovers because she likes to sit in the hard plastic chairs and watch people come and go through the terminal. It's the people coming and going that she really loves. She makes stories up about them.

For example, the woman next to her is flying home to see her sister who she hasn't talked to in 20 years, but the sister called and asked so the woman swallowed the bitterness, which had turned acidic over all that time like stale medicine, and got on a plane.

And the man across from her, typing furiously on his laptop is the personal assistant to someone corporate bigwig, but at night he works on a travel book about the rain forest. Jane decides he's never actually been to the rain forest, which makes the book writing hard, but he's determined. He loves toucans for their improbability and she likes the way his suit doesn't quite fit; he doesn't quite fit in the business world but he's trying to be practical and collect a paycheck until his dreams come true. She can relate to that.

And then there are the families--Jane always makes their stories happy ones. The world needs more happy families. She needs more families to be happy ones.

Today, Jane is flying back to Vancouver, back to Thornfield, to Adele. Today, she is flying home.

Hers isn't necessarily a happy family. They aren't even a family really, but an ad hoc group of people gathered under the same roof. But she’s going to claim them and after all of Mr. Rochester’s tweets she’d like to think they’d claim her. They're something resembling a family and that's as close as Jane has had in a long time. She'll take something-like-a-family, even an imperfect one, over what she had before, which was nothing.

She smooths her palms on her jeans and bites her lip. Home. Coming back to Mrs. Reed's revealed a lot of things, but the one thing Jane keeps circling back to is the idea of home. It feels significant that for the first time since Helen she's able to say with confidence that she has a home. She can't help but grin like an idiot when she thinks about it. She ducks her head to hide her smile. Home– it’s like the toucan, she thinks, such an improbability in this deadly serious, desperate world that it borders on a miracle.

If someone was people-watching her they'd think she was punch drunk with love from the smile on her face. If someone were people-watching her she'd invite them to tell her their story for her. She’d want it to be a happy one, but she wouldn't want it to be a story of coming and going, flitting around the world, seeking just any adventure. Rather, she would want it to be the story of a certain kind of adventure, a seek-and-you-shall-find kind of tale. Because none of it means anything without a home.

Thornfield may not be her forever home, but its reminded Jane what means to have an anchor, a place to return to. Sometimes it takes going away to realize that returning is the sweetest part. Jane sees people like that every time she flies. They tap their foot and watch the clock. They are the first on the plane and the first off. Their bags are the heaviest because they've been gone for a long time. Whatever it was that took them away had to have been significant because, see, they have a home to return to and they want to get back there. Jane hopes that if someone looked at her today they would see her that way, as a girl flying home.

Jane isn't sure when Thornfield became home, but being away from that place and its people has solidified it in her mind, pinned it to her heart. She can see it: gregarious and stately, made of rock and glass, with its long drive and twin turrets. She can see it and she misses it so much that her palm itches all the time as if she is anxious down to her skin to get back to the place where she belongs.

The first time Jane arrived at Thornfield she thought it was foreboding, something out of a bad mystery novel, but with time she began to see the details. Ivy grew along the south side of the house, creeping and curling, until it softened the lines of the thick grey stone. The drive maybe long, but if you walk it enough (which Jane has) you notice the flowerbeds. Jane is anxious for spring so she can learn the names of the flowers planted there. And though she used to think the turrets were unnecessary flash now she knows that the library is in the east turret. The room is beautiful - circular with built in bookcases and overstuffed chairs. She and Adele have spent many nights in there and now that the weather has turned decidedly cold she can't wait to return to that room. Adele will be there with her usual litany of facts that dazzle Jane and Jane will make up stories for them. They will have tea and try not to laugh at Grace when she asks haughtily if they have permission from Ricardo to use the good china.

"He's very particular about its use," Grace always said. "He's very responsible like that."

That's another thing Jane can't wait to see - if Grace and Ricardo are still dancing back and forth, neither speaking nor acknowledging their feelings for one another. Jane isn't even sure they're aware of their own feelings, which are so blatantly obvious that Blanche even broached the subject with her once. It was the only full conversation Jane had ever had with Blanche.

"So that's what Grace looks like in love," Blanche remarked one night. She’d wandered into the library where Jane was reading. Grace had just chastised Jane again for her use of the good china to drink her tea.

Jane can't remember where Adele was, but for a few minutes it had been just her and Blanche and Jane had no idea what to say to the tall, willowy woman. But after Grace left, Blanche made her remark and Jane was forced to respond. She had to say something, right? It'd be rude not to.

"You really think she's in love with him?" Jane stuttered.

Blanche gave her a smug smile, "It's so obvious. Can't you see it?"

"I think she's partial to him," Jane looked down at her book. It bothered her to think that someone might be able to read such private feelings on another person's face.

Blanche picked over the nearest bookshelf, "Well, when you become a woman you learn to recognize love on other people."

Recalling the comment, Jane can’t help but roll her eyes. Yes, Jane is looking forward to seeing even Blanche.

Jane realized rewatching the videos of her cousins - women can be so different from one another. Liz and Joanna were related and yet they could hardly share the same thought for more than a moment. Jane did not need to be Blanche Ingram to be a woman.

It sounds silly when she says it aloud in her head. She picks at her cuticles and for a few minutes lets her mind wander back to the people around her.

A few rows over a teenage girl hunches over her iphone, tapping away, and Jane imagines that she’s in the popular crowd at school, a cheerleader, and maybe girlfriend to the school hockey star. But on the weekends (in Jane's head) she populates math message boards because see she likes math. She really likes math and she’s still figuring out how to reconcile that fact with who people see on the outside.

It’s okay, Jane wants to tell the girl, we’re all still trying to do that.

Jane isn’t stupid – she knows she needs to hear the same advice. There is this girl she is on the inside – passionate, opinionated, and strong – and then there is the girl – the toad – that John used to point to and bully. Who she is isn’t what people see. Blanche’s comment had been off handed. Jane doesn’t want to hold it against her, but it had hurt. It implied that Jane wasn’t a woman yet. Jane got that Blanche Ingram was everything Jane would never be – worldly, rich, statuesque, stunning, and sophisticated. Meanwhile, Jane was just the nanny and before that she had been just the strange, orphaned girl. Once she was Helen’s friend, but that had been for such a short time that it felt like an eclipse, strange and otherworldly. Yes, she knows when people looks at her all they see is Jane, Jane Eyre.

But how she wants to be seen! Truly and completely seen from the inside out. She wants someone to look at her and not be able blink. She wants to see herself reflected in their eyes. She wants to know that who she suspects she is on the inside is true. She doesn't want to be the only person who likes her for her. She just needs one other person and then - maybe - some of her hesitation will fall away. She'll be able to just be her and know that whatever the world throws at her she'll be okay because she isn't alone anymore. It's not that she needs someone to boost her self-esteem (Jane likes who she is - she just worries that maybe her self-perception is off and the world's opinion is the true Jane Eyre). It's the loneliness the piles on sometimes.

Her need is so visceral that she can feel it move up her spine, a thousand tiny pinpricks each the length of a breath.

Jane tugs her knees up and ducks her head so she is curled up in her own tight space. She doesn’t know why she’s so melancholy. Usually she loves airports.

But the reality is that as great as the idea of home can be it also dredges up something raw inside Jane. Maybe it's Thornfield specifically. Thornfield and its enigmatic owner.

She forces herself to exhale and sit up. With practiced determination Jane reminds herself not to dwell on Mr. Rochester. She has had to say it to herself every time she is tempted to rewatch the last video of them before she left. There had been flirting, right? She’s not imagining it. And twice he held her hand in his. She lingered over each instance at least a dozen times over until she had to force herself to stop. He was marrying Blanche Ingram. Yes, his tweets had been teasing and muddled her heart even more, but he. was. marrying. Blanche.

Jane may be a lot of things, but one thing she isn’t is desperate. She isn't going to pine over what she can't have. She has no reason to be because now she has a home.

"Now boarding for Vancouver," the flight attendant announces over the PA.

Jane gathers up her backpack and throws out the styrofoam cup of cold tea. She pulls out her ticket and stares hard at the airport acronym YVR.

"Home," she tells herself. Home is what matters. It's the first step to everything else.


End file.
